Ashford International Law P.C.

Ashford International Law P.C. is the premier law firm with a practice limited to cross-border issues. We welcome co-counsel and referral relationships with domestic and foreign colleagues. Ashford International Law PC works with attorneys, notaries, trustees, executors, accountants, and family offices as U.S. counsel and as coordinating counsel on international asset planning as well as estate, trust, and tax matters. Finally, we advise Western European family-owned businesses on their operations in the United States. We form U.S. subsidiaries for closely-held foreign companies and act as their outside counsel thereafter, drafting shareholder loan agreements, intercompany and management services agreements, board and shareholder resolutions, and related-party arrangements. This corporate work is handled in-house, alongside the tax and succession questions such structures raise: withholding on shareholder debt, debt-versus-equity characterization, and the eventual transfer of shares to the next generation.

The firm is led by attorney Caroline E. Ashford, PhD, JD. A graduate of Columbia University Law School, her whose practice focuses on international estate planning and the cross-border taxation and administration of estates and trusts holding U.S. assets. Looking back at 17 years of experience in cross-border private client matters, Dr. Ashford advises in English, German and French. We are glad to work alongside a family’s existing advisers and local counsel or to handle the U.S. side of the matter end to end.

Examples of what we handle on the U.S. side

• Resident and nonresident estate and gift tax: situs analysis, the $60,000 exemption, treaty relief, blocker structures, Form 706-NA, and transfer certificates;
• Ancillary probate and administration of U.S. assets for foreign estates, executors, and fiduciaries
• Trusts across legal systems: recognition in civil-law jurisdictions, foreign grantor and nongrantor classification, the throwback rules, migration and decanting, and the QDOT for a non-citizen surviving spouse;
• Distributions to foreign beneficiaries: withholding, Forms 1042 and 1042-S, Schedule K-1, W-8 documentation, and fiduciary and transferee liability;
• U.S. compliance and remediation: FBAR, Forms 8938, 3520 and 3520-A, FATCA classification, delinquent filings, and the reasonable-cause record;
• Pre-immigration and exit planning: the planning window before a move, §877A and covered-expatriate status, and the §2801 tax on gifts and bequests;
• Marital property and succession conflicts: how a German, French, Swiss, Italian, or Belgian regime, forced heirship, and the EU Succession Regulation interact with a U.S. estate plan;
• U.S. real estate and securities for non-U.S. investors, including FIRPTA and the PFIC treatment of inherited fundDetails

Details of some of the services:

Distributions and payments to beneficiaries abroad

• Withholding analysis on every distribution: determining whether a payment to a foreign beneficiary is FDAP or effectively connected, and what rate applies before the payment is released.
• Treaty rate determinations: establishing entitlement to a reduced or zero rate under the applicable income-tax treaty, including limitation-on-benefits analysis and the documentation the institution must hold to support it.
• Forms 1042, 1042-S, and 1042-T: preparing and reviewing the reporting that follows a distribution, reconciling it with Schedules K-1, and correcting prior-year filings.
• Schedule K-1 versus 1042-S: handling reporting distributions from a U.S. estate or trust to a nonresident beneficiary.
• Distributable net income and character tracing: allocating DNI across beneficiaries in different countries so that each receives the correct characterization and credit.
• Backup withholding, TIN, and ITIN issues: obtaining ITINs for foreign beneficiaries, curing missing or invalid numbers, and avoiding the 24% backup withholding on distributions.

Documentation, classification, and account-level compliance

• W-8 documentation files: building and auditing the W-8BEN, W-8BEN-E, W-8IMY, and W-8ECI files that support a reduced rate, including the treatment of hybrid entities, foreign trusts, and estates.
• Presumption rules: advising on the consequences when documentation is missing, expired, or unreliable, and on the curing procedures available before a payment.
• FATCA classification of estates, trusts, and family entities as FFIs, NFFEs, or exempt persons, including registration, GIIN, and reporting consequences.
• Withholding-agent liability: assessing the institution’s own exposure for under-withholding, payment of US and overseas death-related taxes, interest, and penalties, and designing the controls that prevent it.
• Account onboarding and periodic review for accounts with non-U.S. owners, beneficiaries, or signatories, integrated with the institution’s existing KYC process.
• OFAC, sanctions, and AML screening of beneficiaries, payees, and counterparties before a distribution or transfer is made.

Fiduciary liability, release of assets, and estate closing

• 31 U.S.C. §3713 personal liability: the fiduciary’s exposure for paying beneficiaries before the government, and the sequencing that avoids it.
• IRC §6324 transferee and personal liability: the estate-tax lien, the long reach of transferee liability against beneficiaries abroad, and how a fiduciary protects itself.
• Transfer certificates (IRS Form 5173): obtaining, and advising institutions that require, the certificate before U.S. securities, accounts, or other assets are released to a foreign estate.
• Situs determinations for custodians and transfer agents: whether a given holding is U.S.-situs property whose release triggers estate-tax procedures.
• Refunding agreements, waivers, indemnities, and holdbacks: drafting the instruments that let a fiduciary distribute while a foreign tax, claim, or filing remains open.
• Discharge, closing, and record retention: the documentation that supports a fiduciary’s release when beneficiaries and assets are outside the United States.

Trust and estate administration with foreign parties

• Probate proceedings involving foreign heirs, foreign wills, foreign forced-heirship claims, or absent beneficiaries.
• Litigation involving foreign heirs, foreign wills or foreign forced-heirship claims.
• Foreign beneficiaries of U.S. trusts: reporting, withholding, distribution planning, and the beneficiary’s home-country consequences, communicated in the beneficiary’s language where needed.
• Non-U.S. settlors and grantors: the classification of the trust, the grantor-trust consequences, and the reporting the trustee owes while the settlor is living and after.
• Foreign assets held by U.S. estates and trusts: FBAR and Form 8938 obligations, including the signature-authority exposure of individual trust officers.
• Forms 3520 and 3520-A where a U.S. fiduciary or beneficiary deals with a foreign trust.
• Successor and co-trustee arrangements across jurisdictions, and the migration, domestication, or decanting of a trust whose beneficiary base has moved abroad.

Institutional support

• Standing counsel arrangements for trust companies, banks, broker-dealers, and family offices on the cross-border questions that recur in their books of business.
• Policy, procedure, and control design: screening protocols, escalation paths, and distribution checklists for accounts with foreign connections.
• File reviews and remediation: reviewing a portfolio of accounts or matters for unaddressed withholding, documentation, or reporting exposure, and correcting it.
• Training for trust officers, operations, and compliance teams, delivered in-house or through the firm’s webinar programme.

A library for advisers

We publish a growing library of technical guides written for professionals rather than clients — on situs and treaty relief, foreign-trust classification, withholding on distributions, PFICs, matrimonial-property regimes, and the engagement of foreign counsel. Most are free to download and to share within your firm, and a webinar program accompanies them.